Finding Mentors

For a first generation entrepreneur, not being in the right circles, it is difficult to find mentors.

I have almost lost a decade without the mentors for which I regret.

But, the interesting part I have recently discovered and explored is that you can make certain popular people your mentors and follow their fantastic advice to advance in all aspects of life.

A few people I consider my mentors today and follow them rigourously:
Naval Ravikant - Philosophy, leverage (https://www.instagram.com/naval/?hl=en)

Hormozi - Productivity and leveling up (https://www.instagram.com/hormozi/?hl=en)

Dan Koe - The future skills, writing, creativity (https://www.instagram.com/thedankoe/?hl=en)

Benjamin Hardy - The future you (https://www.instagram.com/drbenjaminhardy/?hl=en)

Jesse Itzler - Living life to the fullest (https://www.instagram.com/jesseitzler/?hl=en)

Vusi Thembekwayo - Entrepreneurship, Business marketing and sales (https://www.instagram.com/vusithembekwayo/?hl=en)

A year ago, I considered the following as my mentors:

Patrick Bet David - Entrepreneurship, Strategy (https://www.instagram.com/patrickbetdavid/?hl=en)

Elon Musk - For his hard working ethics.

John Wick - for fire fighting insane number of problems as an entrepreneur.

As I now realise, the today's mentors I follow are more relevant to learn from and the previous mentors are more inspirational than anything particular to learn from.

Finding the right mentors and changing them as part of our evolution of changing needs is progress.

Back to the old

 Some statistics I got to know recently:

1. 1 in 9 people or 11% are expected to get cancer

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36510887/

2. 10-15% of couples in India have infertility issues

3. In US, the age of first menstruation has reduced by over 4 years compared to history from 16 to 12 years. One of the reasons stated is higher estrogen release due to effect of ingestion of micro plastics.

4. Obesity and heart disease is on the increase everywhere.

The health issues trends we are seeing are not encouraging as a society.

The attitudes, the priorities, the marketing of non-sense things have eaten up the upcoming generation wholly, and a huge part of the existing working generation. The retired generation was only partially affected by this.

However, our granparents generation are least affected by it as at that time, there wasn't that much communication and marketing. They lived on basic, healthy and sustainable things unlike the future generations where contamination started.

What kinds of contamination?

1. Food - from natural to genetically modified, excess use of pesticides and fertilizers, harmones and antibiotics in farmed animals, synthetics and colours.

2. Drinks and beverages - chemical concoctions as carbonated drinks, excess drinking by people, a lot of things being consumed in plastics enabling ingestion of microplastics (from tea bags, cool drinks, etc)

3. Promoting Immediate gratification with negative effects versus over long term gratification with real benefits.

4. Pharma Businesses buying out the researches and giving bad advice and concocting grand schemes to make more money.

5. Fake news confusing everyone.

In these kinds of times, it is best to adopt philosophies on food, health, items from not this generation but from what our grandparents had used as they were pure, raw and uncontaminated.

Understanding experiences

A good experience needs you to understand the following about it:

Nuances, Expectations, Comfort and Context.

Nuances are the technicalities you need to understand and do certain actions in certain ways to get the experience going ahead.

Expectations if unrealistic can have a big disappointment and maybe even accidents. Controlling the overexcitement is also important to be in a realistic zone.

Understanding your physical and mental comfort in the new situation is important and to keep it in the comfortable area is crucial. Getting out of the Comfort zone during the new experience can cause anxiety, tension and scariness and do things that make us lose control and may end up in accidents.

Context is about being aware of the environment. The context brings with it the unique set of constraints and a few opportunities. Being aware of it is important for your safety and well being.

You can use these 4 parameters for any new experience. Be it driving a vehicle for the first time, adventure sports, trying new food or anything else for that matter.

Let's take an example to understand: Scuba diving.

Nuances: The nuances of breathing from the mouth instead of nose. The sign language to remember and use under water. Reading the depth in the depth watch. Remembering to blow air through your nose in case of water entering the goggles.

Right expectations: We would move around clumsily and may even fall after wearing the fins on land. Do things slowly and don't be in a rush. Do not pull the other person who can barely see or hear you with all the equipment being worn.

Comfort: We should not feel any pain of wearing the oxygen cylinders and be comfortable in the scuba suits. We should be mentally strong to be under water and not be scared of losing our lives. Comfort of having water into the ears and your eyes slightly burn in sea water if it enters the goggles.

Context: Are you scuba diving near rocks with high seas where the water can push you into the rocks or in calm waters? Was the scuba trainer training good? Was all the scuba equipment good and well fitted to your body size thereby minimizing risk? Has the scuba guide taken an extra tank of air for safety? Are you close to a safe place called home or away? Is the situation risky (rough waters, opaque waters) or normal (calmer waters, clear visibility) by the standards of the guide?

Understanding the unique set of parameters in each of these 4 categories would define your good experience each time. 

Good and bad experiences

Good Experience is about getting the what, where, how at least 85% right.

If we dont know the details, expectations, services or dont get it right, it turns out to be a bad experience.

The first bad experience creates a big burden of not wanting to try the experience again. It can be boring or uncomfortable at the least and painful or scary at the worst.

It is important to be guided into the "Right" experience with correct information, tips of getting it right, pitfalls to avoid and to take care of yourself in the context.

Most people are not guided into new experiences thereby hesitating into getting into more new experiences.

Life is a huge set of first time Experiences.

The racing experience, the boyfriend-girlfriend experience, the bunking school for a movie experience, the exploring a new city experience, travelling for a vacation experience, buying your first own automobile experience, staying alone as a bachelor experience,  making new friends experience, trying some crazy food experiences, dabbling in the crypto markets and derivatives experience, first physical intimacy experience, a running experience, teaching experience, engaging a kid experience, visiting an art museum experience, performing live onstage experience, a send off experience, making something memorable for someone experience, discussing experiences' experience, visiting a monastery experience, comforting someone greeving experience, handling inheritance, handling a death in the family experience and much more.

This is where a "Chief Experience Officer" comes in, to help you get the right understanding, sense, direction, pace, packages and tips to get the best out of your experience.

Crime master Gogo philosophy

There is a character called Crime master Gogo in the film Andaz apna apna.

Funny movie.

The character has a line "Aaya hoon toh kuch toh lootkar jaaoonga."

I relate to a similar philosophy. "Aaya hoon toh value exchange karke jaoonga."

In other words, wherever I am, I will give or get value or both.

Types of new experiences

There are many different types of experiences:

1. Adventures sports

2. Food

3. Seeing and watching unique things (a geyser in Iceland or seeing a real kangaroo with a joey in it's pouch)

4. Rare things (First show of a movie, finals of a tournament)

5. Latest new things (like immersive Museums in 2023 which are just popping around the world)

6. Personal records

7. Doing the usual in an unusual context

8. Artistic

9. Something that brings a new perspectives (a movie like the Truman show)

10. Doing something crazy while in a group

11. Listening to or seeing another persons unusual or personal story.

12. Relationship experiences

Let me know if there are more categories.

Chief experience officer

You are running your life and you are its chief executive officer (the CEO).

But, as time is limited for everyone to enjoy and learn things in life, we all need to constantly experience and learn new things.

With constant new experiences, one gains knowledge, the right mindset, connecting various knowledge leading to insights, gaining wisdom without doing the amateurish mistakes, opening of the mind to imaginations and creating possibilities and ideas.

Life is a collection of Experiences.

Everybody have experiences and knowledge and stories.

Most have small ticket Experiences.

Few have medium to big ticket experiences. Very few of these have the willingness and intention to share these. Even fewer, have the time and are willing to go through the effort to share it.

Based on my belief that "Life is a collection of Experiences", I am the Chief Experience Officer of myself, my family and few others.

This role demands the following:

1. Being in touch with the latest happenings and opportunities in the world by building systems to get this to you.

2. Digging beyond the surface to understand the what, how, where, how much cost, the risks and the benefits.

3. Communicating the new available experiences to the group

4. Finding the right point in the 4 dimensions (x,y,z and when) to execute the new experience.

5. Executing the experience seamlessly.

Everybody needs a Chief Experience Officer for their life to maximise the meaning of life.

This role is not identified or defined by most and they miss out on many things in life.

Do comment on what you think about this role for yourself.

Learning from others

Some of life's important lessons I have learnt are from unexpected people whom I got to know pretty closely:

1. A 80 year lady landlord staying with her mother of 94 years old during 2006-2008 during my first job.

She had no children and her husband had passed away 5-10 years ago. She stayed in the first floor of the building while renting out the ground floor to me and my roommate. She was well educated and had stayed abroad for a long time. She was educated, elegant and respected. 

The other building in the compound belonged to her sister who had a daughter. The odd thing was that the sister didnt like my landlady as she was jealous of the love my landlady showered on her daughter. Also, she had mentioned to me that her sister wanted her to will away the house to her.

I have wondered many times what does she have to look forward everyday to get up to? Maybe taking care of her mom. But what after her mom passes away, even while the world eyeing to take away the wealth from the lonely widow.

What do you have to look forward for each day you get up?

Everybody needs a purpose,  or atleast something to be busy with.

2. Chaitanya Sathe

A school friend with a brilliant mind for physics, mathematics and equations who died in an accidental fall while mountaineering and living his life.

Although very sad to pass away below 40 years, the question remains: Is the best way to die doing what you love best?

3. A divorce of a friend from a love marriage years ago.

How 2 people attracted to each other have grown apart over the years and have nothing in common apart from the kids.

Having more common things and interests with spouse to discuss, engage and find solutions is the key to not grow apart and not be disinterested. 

4. A friend whom I try teaching how to live life better. In the process, I am able to introspect a lot of things, somethings in some new perspectives and I am learning new things including many insights which come out as blog posts these days.

Teaching is the best way to learn.

5. Listening to my daughter.

The most unexpected source of learning the latest things. She had worked on creating ai based images in canva with great images (no installation, no payment and better images) while the world is not aware and trying hard with stable diffusion, Leonardo and another tool.

Talk to other exploratory people.

Mediocre to great

 

Levels of living life are usually classified as survival, mediocre and great.

I believe, in reality, there is a huge amount of people in the zone between mediocre and great.

So, what is this area all about?

In survival, you have no discipline and no success.

In mediocre, you have discipline and control over some things.

In great, you have discipline and success in most of the areas of life.

The yellow area in between is where you have a good discipline in some areas but do not have discipline in the other areas which is not giving the compounding effect for the areas you are disciplined to make your life great.

Let me give you an example. You are great at saving money and investing. But you smoke heavily causing you ill health and making you spend a lot on Healthcare, thereby reducing your financial success instead of allowing it to further grow.

To live a great life, several things matter: mindset, what you focus on, what you learn and improve, earning well, investing, health, spouses mindsets and habits, spending habits, friends, networks, time management, vision, motivation, etc.

To move from mediocre to great requires one to master and discipline from a minority of things to the majority of the things and that is where the real struggle and effort is.

Ingredients to an exploring nature

I am an explorer at heart and mind.

I find, get, tune into things that hit me with new and varied information.

I like finding new things and find out how they work and how they connect.

It can be any field - Law, Weapons, Food, Places, Behaviours, Culture, Looks, Science, Politics, Geography, War, Business, Movies, Psychology, Scripts and lyrics, Music, Finance, etc.

As an example, many people go through the same newspaper or the same road as me but I have discovered more interesting things than them.

How come?

I think an exploring nature has 5 key skills:
1. Curiosity to know and use the information

2. Patience to keenly observe

3. Understand at the base level

4. Think about it at a deeper level of how and why

5. Engage / play / experiment with it by connecting the dots / varied information already known

The world is full of interesting and new concoctions for the curious and patient person.

Funny Business is not Funny

One may find Jimmy Carr as a very controversial stand up comedy. If you have heard him for an hr, you may describe him as any or more of the following:
Disgusting, Offensive, Loser, Pathetic, A**hole, Shrewd, Insulting, Abusing, Tacky, Cheap, Trashy and more.

The topics he chooses are all adult themed and more on the taboo side of the society.

He has chosen that as his speciality and he is a master at it.

An "ok" joke by his standard is "Every night, after the show, I have many attractive women banging on my dressing room doors. Sometimes, I let them out."

To get an idea of it, here is one of his live stand up comedies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD7xoJxn8TA

Now, there is a totally another side of him:

https://www.instagram.com/wealthytools/reel/C83ryW8vVOE/

Here he is telling us how we take life's pleasures for granted and that 100 years ago even a king could not take a hot shower to relax which we can do instantly. He questions how we are living like kings and yet life is objectively better and subjectively worse.

These contrasting topics have a few things in common: Insights, Perspective, Deep understanding.

Through this post, I am putting a point that stand up comedy is actually about insights about human behaviour and expectations and is put across from a non-common perspective.

To be a good comedian requires that they become a good subject matter expert in their area of specialization. And that is not funny, and should be respected.

Connectedness and Feelings

 

Friendliness and professionalism

Power of timely love

 The 8 minutes catch up with a friend by Simon Senek:

The 8 min catchup

The perfect hug:

5-10 sec hug

A concept by John Gottman

The 6 second kiss

In conclusion, spend at least 8 min with a friend, a 10 sec hug to a loved one and a 6 second kiss to your partner.

Good Love v/s Bad Love

Good love sets you free. Bad love enslaves you.

Good love changes you for the better. Bad love forces you to unwilling changes.

Good love is supportive. Bad love is dominating.

Good love is empowering. Bad love is disempowering.

Good love is based on trust. Bad love is based on jealousy/ fear/ need to fit in/ not to be alone.

Good love doesn't demand you to give up on friends/ colleagues/ family. Bad love is obsessive and demands other sacrifices.

Good love helps you grow. Bad love enslaves you physically / mentally / sexually / emotionally.

What is a good photo?

I love good photos.

I love good authentic photos.

But what is a good photo ?

I googled to check.

The top answers were:

1. If you always consider these three variables, light, subject, and composition. You will have mastered perhaps the most critical part of photography, and learned how to actually convey an emotional message with your shots.

2. What Are The Qualities Of A Good Photograph?

• Timelessness.
• It doesn't need to be explained.
• Tell us a story.
• Be selective about just what you allow into the picture.
• Attention To Detail.
• Unusual Point of View.
• They create emotion.

3. What is the definition of a good photo?

“A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective.” – Irving Penn.

So here is my view of what is a great photo.

Photos consists only of a few things like the game we used to play as a kid: People, Places, Animals & Things.

To understand what a photo is, we have to understand that it is a slice of time. Everything is so unique about it because it is that unique slice of time we have captured. 

But, any photo is not a good photo.

If it is a person or people, it has to capture an emotion. It has to be candid so that the emotion can be captured in all its honesty and reality, in the moment and unconsciously by the subject. An emotion that when looked at later brings nostalgia to the person and brings back the feelings in them what they experienced at that point in time. It should be like a time travel. If any other person sees it, it must convey the story and the emotion of the person and what they were going through.

If the photo is of a place, it should take you back to that place mentally (good or bad depends on that place) and give you the highs or the shivers.

If it is an animal, it is must be about it doing something unique or focussed and about to do something.

It is a thing, the contrast of it vis-a-vis other things should define the traditions, culture and context of the human civilisation.

If a photo captures more than one of these 4 elements together, it would be an outstanding photo.

Success & failure - A difference of Motivation

We all have goals in 3 categories - stated, unstated and undefined.

A stated goal could be buy a house by next year.

Unstated goal could be vague as in get healthy.

Undefined is something we have not even given a thought of it yet.

To achieve goals, there needs to be motivation.

There are different levels of motivation:

1. Determined by self motivation 

2. Determined by external motivation

3. Work for pay (clear give and take relationship)

4. Voluntary (doing partially or half heartedly)

5. Needs nudge to do

6. Doing with push from other(s)

7. Doing after a threat

All goals or activities can be classified under these different motivation levels.

A comparison of the bar chart of the motivations against goals of a successful and unsuccessful person would be a contrast even with the same goals at X axis.

The level of motivation determines the success.

Having a good time - What does this mean to you?

I recently mentioned to someone that I had a good time and I am looking forward to the good times again. The phrase lingered on my mind for some time after the conversation. I didnt actually know how else to mention the time I spent as it was literally "a good time" that I enjoyed with actual only ingredient: "interesting / knowledgable conversation".

If anyone outside the context heard it, "a good time" could mean a lot of things.

So, what does having a good time mean?

For some, it is partying.

For some, it could be drugs and/or sex.

For some, it could be the company of someone while enjoying a movie/ show, etc.

For some, it could be a few good laughs with friends with or without pulling each other's legs.

For some, it is a romantic evening with a date/ partner.

For some, it could be a deep or interesting conversation on a certain topic for a pleasant experience and some insights.

This more or less follows the Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

As we go from partying, drugs, sex from physiological and safety needs to friendships and love to  recognition and self worthiness to the highest level of self-actualisation.

So what does self-actualisation mean?

Self actualisation refers to feeling fulfilled, or feeling that we are living up to our potential. One unique feature of self-actualization is that it looks different for everyone. For one person, self-actualization might involve helping others; for another person, it might involve achievements in an artistic or creative field. Essentially, self-actualization means feeling that we are doing what we believe we are meant to do. 

Having actually had a good time in Self-actualisation zone, I have to say it is very addictive as it is the highest form of mental feel good, one can have.

There is no formal guidance for anyone to anyone to actually understand how each person can reach the self-actualisation zone. Understanding oneself through a proper system of coaching is one way I have found out.

Conflicts in love

 I recently watched an avant garde movie called "Love Lies and Bleeding".

The movie took a few things to the extremes with the plot and with clear decisions to be made.

On introspecting the movie, there were different kinds of love: Sibling love (to protect the other), Husband-wife love (the wife loved him despite he being a physical abuser), father-daughter love/ dislove (where one daughter separated from the father due to his alleged killing of her mother) and lesbian love (2 ladies loving one lady).

The clashes and conflicts that came:
One sister wants to protect her sister from abuse and is ok with killing her husband while the abused sister wants to continue her troubled relationship with her husband. Priority and purpose of love.

One lady loving another while a stranger loves the same girl. Competition in love.

A father wants to protect her daughter from cops while she says mum about the killing of the mother and others by her dad. Love to not hurt.

The conflicts came when one love or the purpose of one love came in confrontation or a higher priority of another love.

In modern worlds, these conflicting loves are there but not shown explicitly.

One of the most common substitutes of love is giving time. When one relationship gets more time (or assumedly more time than required) than another, this comes as a conflict in love. These relationships could be grandparent-parent v/s parent-child v/s parent-in laws v/s spouse-spouse v/s friends time v/s relaxation or hobby time.

It is almost impossible not to have conflicts with the limited resources of time.

How we keep what relationships we want for the future, manage/reduce the non-value added relationships to get what we want out of life is the question.

Open Mics and Stand up comedies

I have discovered Open mics (The precursor to the stand up comedies) about a year ago. I have visited about 10 open mics over this period. 

There are multiple things I look forward to these:
Hilarious takes on situations, Good jokes, Open talk on societies' taboo topics and also the Gen Z's thoughts, perspectives, online tools and in general being in touch with that generations' ecosystem.

An example:
I just knew about a dating app called Tinder. But an artist's full fledged stand up of 10 min comparing the people you find on each of the popular dating apps was both hilarious, cringy as well as very informational for an outsider like me.

Relationship between Time and Money

The relationship between these 2 things is interesting:
The middle class and poor, value money more than time and give their time to earn money.

The business class and the rich, value time more than money and spend money to save time.

For this class, money is time. 

Money is a tool with multiple purposes - to buy something for someone and make someone happy, to attend the best schools and gain the best knowledge to use, to travel around the world for business meetings, conferences and build and keep connections and build the networks. To get the best of the services to solve the problems than spend time to figure it out.

The middle class and the poor, don't know many ways to make money apart from trading their time to earn money with the particular set of skills they have.

For this class, time is money.

As potential to earn is limited, money is scarce and cannot be thought to spend on things, services that could have been outsourced.

For the business class and the rich, know that there are multiple ways to make money, but time is limited. They have seen their money and wealth go up and down many times and understand it much deeper. They sometimes have connections (trust from customers, suppliers, associations, bank credit, mortgaging assets) they can leverage to get back from a bad position.

Zonkey

Meet the Zonkey.

When "WTF" has more than one real meaning - (What and Who)

You can see this family in the Baku Zoo, Azerbaijan

Skiing at Shahdag, Azerbaijan

My wife and I tried skiing at Shahdag range of mountains at Azerbaijan.

We stayed at Hotel Zirve where there is a ski school with instructors.

A few details about skiing:

It is not as easy as it looks. It involves getting the physics right. Just like other things (trekking, scuba diving, helmet diving, archery, golf, shooting) 

There are a few things we learnt about the details and process of skiing doing it here for the first time overall.

The process involves a few steps:

1. Register your time slot for individual instructions. (Here they allow maximum 3 people per instructor)

2. You need to hire the following: Ski shoes, Skis, Ski sticks, Helmet, Goggles (optional), Jacket (optional if you already have one), Gloves (optional)

3. You need to pay the following: Equipment renting, Ski instructor fees and the Ski pass - for using the ski slopes (Like a green fee on golf courses)

Please be ready to spend at least 1-1.5 hr before the instruction time to get these 3 things done.

Post this, the live instructions of how to connect / Disconnect the skis with the ski-shoes on ice can start.

The instructor we were assigned was good in English and patient and helped us correct with the mistakes we made and took us (my wife and I) step by step.

At the end of the 2 hrs session, we asked him to video record our skiing and he did a marvellous job of it too.

Few new things to know for a first timer: The ski shoes are very different from all other shoes and are very heavy (maybe 3 kgs each leg). The ski shoe is meant to not break or let the leg slip out even when you put the maximum weight on the front and try to fall front (the ideal body position) when skiing.

Please do expect a few falls with the entire attire while trying to negotiate a curve or trying to stop, but be free to fall and prevent any injuries. I saw at least 2 other people fall in the 2 hrs apart from we falling off.

Skiing has significant costs:

Renting of 2 pairs of Skis, Ski sticks, Shoes, Helmet, Goggles and a locker for our shoes costed us about 132 Mannat or USD 78.

Ski instructor fees was 185 mannat or about USD 109

Ski pass for 2 was 66 Mannat or about USD 39

Tip to instructor of 15 Mannat or about USD 9

Total Skiing = 398 Mannat or about INR 19900

Happy Skiing!